This summer my 11 year old has been reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy. As of this writing, he’s finished Two Towers and will be diving into Return of the King. I’m thrilled he’s reading these classics, but feeling a bit wistful—we began with my reading Fellowship of the Ring to him (more about that here), but he got tired of the read-aloud pace and commandeered the book on a recent trip with his grandparents. Sadness. Anyway.

Like the rest of the family, James is a big fan of the LOTR movies. I think they’re as close to perfect as a 12-hour work of art can possibly be, with the exception of the cast being painfully white. So it’s been interesting and fun to hear him critique the similarities and differences between the films and the books.

The other day, we got to talking about this pivotal scene:

To those of you saying the line, whether in your head or out loud: you are my people.

Here we see Gandalf fighting the Balrog in the mines of Moria, basically holding off the monster so the rest of the Fellowship can escape to safety. Gandalf falls into the abyss with the Balrog, and it’s not clear until The Two Towers what has become of him. Something wondrous has become of him, but that’s another post.

In the book, Gandalf says this to the Balrog:

You cannot pass… I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. You cannot pass. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udûn. Go back to the Shadow! You cannot pass.

In the movie, he says much the same thing, except the final line. There he says, “You shall not pass.”

…Actually, he says

YOU!SHALL NOT!!PASS!!!!

(Yaass Queen!)

In our conversation, James and I mused on the difference between “you shall not pass” and “you cannot pass.” On an aesthetic level, shall sounds WAY stronger. Substantively, the latter (cannot) implies that the Balrog lacks the ability to pass, while the former (shall not) suggests that the Balrog may be capable, but Gandalf will not permit it.

There are times in our lives when we need to call on the language of shall not: to take a stand and say what we will and won’t accept. Other times, it may be a comfort to lean on cannot: to know that, even when we feel weak or afraid or distraught, the things that threaten us are limited in their ultimate power to destroy us.

This conversation came to mind over the weekend, in the wake of shootings in El Paso and Dayton. (The one in Gilroy is already a collective distant memory, eh? Sigh.) Like my friends on the right, I believe there are moral and cultural issues that feed into the scourge of gun violence that afflicts our nation, and our nation uniquely—issues that must be addressed. I’m sure I part ways with them when I name them: toxic masculinity, misogyny, racism, white nationalism, and demagoguery on the part of the Current Occupant. And like my friends on the left, I believe we need more stringent gun safety laws. And no discussion of this issue is complete without pointing out that the overwhelming majority of gun deaths are suicides. (How’s a “good guy with a gun” going to help there?)

A healthy majority in this country supports legislation to increase gun safety, believe it or not. And yet here we are, held captive by stonewalling and monied special interests who block attempts to even study the issue. It’s hard to have any hope that things will ever change for the better.

So maybe we need to channel Movie Gandalf here, when addressing the complacency or the inertia in our own hearts, or heck, the forces that want to us to believe there’s nothing we can do: you shall not. You shall not win. We will not allow well-heeled interest groups to run roughshod on our democracy, such that we don’t even try to address this issue. People have power. We refuse to let you have the last word.

I often quote Archbishop Tutu, during the deepest, darkest days of apartheid, when the government tried to shut down opposition by canceling a political rally. Tutu declared that he would hold a church service instead.

That day, St. George’s Cathedral in Cape Town, South Africa was filled with worshippers. Outside the cathedral hundreds of police gathered, a show of force intended to intimidate. As Tutu was preaching, they entered the Cathedral, armed, and lined the walls. They took out notebooks and recorded Tutu’s words.

But Tutu would not be intimidated. He preached against the evils of apartheid, declaring it could not endure. At one extraordinary point he addressed the police directly: You are powerful. You are very powerful, but you are not gods and I serve a God who cannot be mocked. So, since you’ve already lost, since you’ve already lost, I invite you today to come and join the winning side! With that, the congregation erupted in dance and song.

The Balrog shall not win. We do not permit it. And what’s more, it can’t.

I returned yesterday from a week-long pilgrimage throughout Israel and the West Bank, sponsored by NEXT Church. It was an unforgettable experience. We visited a number of the traditional Christian holy sites, of course, but more significantly, we got to know people living in the region, including a number of folks working for NGOs that focus on peace and justice work. We visited places as varied as Yad Vashem (the Holocaust Memorial), the Balata Refugee Camp in Nablus, the Old City of Jerusalem and the Western Wall, Hebron, and the archaeological ruins of the ancient city of Shiloh, including a Q&A with an Israeli settler that was, in a word, jaw-dropping.

I’m only beginning to get my mind around the trip and what it all means. It’s certainly too soon to even think about writing coherently about it. In the meantime, I will share a little bit about Tent of Nations, an initiative of the Nassar family—Palestinian Christians who have lived on their land for more than 100 years (and have the papers to document it). They are surrounded by Israeli settlements and have been pressured and harassed to leave their land so the settlements can expand. Roads have been blocked to limit access to the property. A few years ago, some 250 of the family’s trees were cut down.

In response, the Nassar farm has become an education center and camp as much as a working farm, teaching non-violent resistance and seeking to model a different way of engagement with one’s neighbors. Their motto is emblazoned on a rock near the entrance:

We refuse to be enemies.

As they wrote recently in an Easter message:

We are people of the resurrection, we are people of hope, we are people of light. We don’t know what tomorrow will look like, but our call will remain to change hearts even in times when we feel that we are still in the dark tomb.

Most members of the “exhausted majority,” and then some, dislike political correctness. Among the general population, a full 80 percent believe that “political correctness is a problem in our country.”

And this attitude transcends race, age, and geography. As a 40-year-old American Indian in Oklahoma put it:

“It seems like everyday you wake up something has changed … Do you say Jew? Or Jewish? Is it a black guy? African-American? … You are on your toes because you never know what to say. So political correctness in that sense is scary.”

In the extended interviews and focus groups, participants made clear that they were concerned about their day-to-day ability to express themselves: They worry that a lack of familiarity with a topic, or an unthinking word choice, could lead to serious social sanctions for them.

I have long said that what some people call “PC” really sounds to me like basic kindness. When people share how they self-identify, or how they want to be addressed, it seems like a no-brainer to honor that. It costs me nothing to do so, and it matters. That is basic Golden Rule stuff.

But I also empathize with those who find it hard to keep up with changes in culture, and who worry about giving offense without meaning to. A new friend of mine is gender non-binary and goes by the pronoun “they.” Despite wanting to honor this person’s identity, I have slipped up many times. I’m also realizing how often I use the word “guys” to describe a generic group of people. It doesn’t bother me to hear the term, but people I care about bump on it. It costs me very little to be more inclusive with my language. I’m grateful for the grace of others to both point out when I fall short, and to understand that I’m trying and will screw up along the way. We could all be kinder to one another.

Even as I seek to do my best to honor others, people of color who are friends and colleagues have helped me see that impact matters more than intent. People can mean well—can intend to act in a positive way—but the effects of their actions are what matter most. I get that. As a woman, I can think of times when a man has tried to stick up for me in a way that goes beyond being an ally and tips over into paternalism. They meant to help, but their actions had the effect of portraying me as helpless and needing a man to rescue me. Impact over intent.

But I also think that, in Maya Angelou’s words, when you know better, you do better. What if one genuinely doesn’t know better? What the survey about PC suggests is that many people want to do the right thing, they just don’t know what it is. I have long loved Thomas Merton’s prayer/poem that begins, “My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.” He writes, “the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.” We are flawed, limited, imperfect human beings, often fumbling to do the right thing. I can’t dismiss the power of intent.

I’ve long wondered, then, is there a way to deepen our cultural conversation beyond impact and intent?

I recently attended a conference for coaches, where I attended a workshop on building trust in teams. The presenter offered four aspects of team trust, gleaned from the book The Thin Book of Trust:

Sincerity: do you mean what you say?

Reliability: do you honor commitments?

Care: do you hold others’ interests in mind?

Competence: do you have the ability to do what’s asked of you?

A lightbulb went off as I considered whether these four traits might help us bust through the impasse I see over what many call “PC culture.” If someone has shown themselves to be generally sincere, reliable, and caring, I will be less inclined to take instant offense when they do something that has a harmful impact. That’s not excusing their behavior, that’s viewing it in a larger context.

A person is sincere when they say, “I’m really trying here,” and you know that they truly are. A person is reliable when they set a course of action and you see them follow through on it. Care is demonstrated in any number of ways, but an overall relationship of care can be a container to hold the many missteps and screwups we make because we’re human.

As for for the fourth quality, competence, well, some folks are willfully ignorant, and don’t care to learn about the world around them and how it’s changing. But others simply don’t know what they don’t know. The goal, then, is to help one another develop cultural competence, in ways that flow from our own sincerity, reliability, and care. (It’s also why social media can be so detrimental to dialogue about these things. How do I know how sincere, reliable, caring, and competent random person on the internet is? Instead we blast first, ask questions later.)

"What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb? What if our America is not dead, but a country that is waiting to be born? What if the story of America is one long labor?" -Valarie Kaur

Greetings from St. Louis and the Presbyterian Church’s General Assembly, a biennial meeting of pastors, elders, young adults, advisory delegates and more, who will deliberate and make decisions about the church, its mission and its future. I’m here on behalf of NEXT Church, talking up our coaching initiative, and offering free coaching sessions for people throughout the week. Some people are feeling stuck in their lives or ministries; others just want to debrief the events of this week. It’s always a holy task, this ministry of deep listening and asking important questions.

The decisions made at GA include plenty of picayune insider stuff about the Presbyterian Church’s governance and structure. But we will also take stands and make statements addressing a number of issues facing our world, hopefully in ways that lift up justice and liberation. Yesterday we marched en masse to the St. Louis City Justice Center, carrying $47,000 to bail some 36 people out of jail. These are folks who are simply awaiting trial, but because they are too poor to afford bail, they are languishing in jail.

It was inspiring to put faith into action, and to do something public and specific to set captives free. It also feels like not nearly enough.

It’s surreal to observe committee meetings and have conversations in hotel lobbies and a fancy convention center, knowing there are children along our southern border who have no idea when or whether they will see their parents again. News broke just last night of so-called “tender age” shelters for infants and toddlers. It is projected that some 30,000 children could fall victim to the family separation policy before the end of the summer. There are various proposals floating around Congress to end the practice, and as I write this, there are reports that the president will be signing a statement to that effect. Time will tell.

Immigration is a tough, tangled issue, befuddling countless presidential administrations, both Republican and Democrat. But as a Christian, this one isn’t hard. Jesus said in Matthew 25, “that which you did to the least of these, you did to me.” And he didn’t stutter.

Many people I talk to are numb right now—the onslaught of news feels relentless, and it’s hard to even figure out what’s accurate, let alone what to do about it. And the actions of an informed citizen—writing a letter, casting a vote—feel so paltry in the wake of political forces that are much bigger than all of us.

In the midst of this numbness, I keep thinking about an interview I heard with Lin-Manuel Miranda and Thomas Kail, the creative team behind the musical Hamilton. They were reflecting on the early days of working on Hamilton—writing, editing, and refining it—and how overwhelming it seemed. They adopted a motto, co-opted from Jerome Robbins when Fiddler on the Roof was in previews in Detroit. Things were not going well for the fledgling production. Kail says:

There’s this moment when Fiddler is really struggling, and Austin Pendleton, a young actor at this point, said, “What are we doing to do?” and Robbins said, “Ten things a day.”

Just do the thing. Do the stuff that’s in front of you: “What can we accomplish today?” So we would come in after a show, and Lin and I would talk to each other… and we’d say OK, what can we accomplish at this time. And you just start chipping away.

In my experience as a coach, many clients know where they want to go, but they’re paralyzed with the tremendous size of the task. So we work together on the principle of “ten things a day”—small, bite-sized pieces that slowly but surely move us forward. It's a way of staying present to today's work instead of tomorrow's results, which we can never control.

We live in chaotic, perilous times. Regardless of your particular convictions and beliefs, numbing out is a luxury we cannot afford. No one can do everything, but everyone can do something. At times, the “something” is to pull back and rest—but always in the service of a deeper engagement, one small act at a time.

What might be today’s “ten things” to help bring about the world for which you hope?Five things?One thing?

Onward,MaryAnn

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For the past two weeks, I’ve been mulling over something I wanted to share with you.
That will have to wait for another time, because the city of my birth is underwater.

Houston is where I was born, where I went to college, where I met Robert, where we were married, where I felt the call to ministry, and where I was ordained as a minister. Those are the big life moments, but as I see pictures of submerged landmarks and read stories of heroism, I think about the countless ordinary memories that made up a pretty great life there: Humid Friday afternoons at picnic tables on the patio of the Gingerman pub, shaded by live oak trees. Heaping bowls of food at Lai Lai’s Dumpling House, with bags of leftovers at the end. The carefree joy of hopping in the car and, 45 minutes later, being on the sandy shores of the Gulf.

I’m heartened, but not surprised, to read stories of Houstonians coming together as a community. As heartbreaking as the devastation is—multiple dear friends of mine had to flee their homes clutching a backpack of possessions—there’s also something comforting in these stories of neighborliness. Our culture seems so rife with rage and rancor these days; I wonder sometimes whether we can ever be whole again. (Were we ever?) Yet as singer-songwriter Carrie Newcomer likes to say, “The things that have always saved us are still here to save us.”

One of the things that saves us, again and again, is ordinary people stepping up and doing hard things. I read a story of a pastor who was stopping at every submerged car he encountered to make sure nobody was trapped inside. Recognizing the parable of the lost sheep when I see it, I shared it with the comment, “Friends, meet Jesus.”

We crave such stories. But here’s the thing. We’re in the story too. Sometimes we’re the ones needing rescue. Other times we’re the ones offering a hand. One thing we cannot afford to be is on the sidelines. Not now, not really ever.

Many Houston friends have been sharing the photo of the beloved graffiti above I-45:

I don’t know whether the message is visible in the wake of Harvey, or if it is hiding under slowly receding waters. But it’s a good reminder. There will be no superhero rescue. Yes, it’s valid to expect our leaders to be more courageous, to uphold the values we hold dear. At the same time… we’re it. We, the cranky and the capable; the MAGAs and the bleeding heart liberals, the fearful and the hopeful.

How will you be someone today? May I suggest one small action? My dollars are going to Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, an organization with good transparency and a record of effectiveness. It offers resources that are practical, non-sectarian, and inclusive to all—and their work persists for years as they help communities recover and rebuild over the long haul. If not PDA, give what you can to the relief organization of your choice.

Houston proud.

MaryAnn

~

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By request, here is the sermon I preached on Wonder Woman two Sundays ago. This isn't exactly what was said, but a close approximation. If you read my article for the Presbyterian Outlook, you will recognize some of those ideas, which I expand upon.

31 ‘When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. 32All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, 33and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. 34Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” 37Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? 38And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? 39And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” 40And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family,* you did it to me.” 41Then he will say to those at his left hand, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; 42for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.”44Then they also will answer, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?” 45Then he will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” 46And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.’

I had a friend some years ago, an older gentleman, who would answer the question “How are you?” with “Better than I deserve.” It always made me chuckle, wondering what kind of trouble he was getting into that he somehow escaped unscathed. I would also flash back to Reformed Theology class with George Stroup at Columbia Seminary and the idea of unmerited grace. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” Paul reminds us in Romans, and our Brief Statement of Faith bluntly agrees: “We deserve God’s condemnation.” The redemption Christ offers us is better than we deserve.

I was amused to hear my friend’s greeting echoed in the recent Wonder Woman movie, in a toast that three good-hearted scoundrels share with one another:

Wonder Woman, or Diana as she’s known in the film, is raised by a tribe of Amazons on the island of Themyscira, and their mission is to fight on behalf of humanity. Specifically, the Amazons believe that Ares, the god of war, has ensnared humankind in endless conflict, and once Ares is defeated, an era of peace will reign. Diana takes on this mission after meeting Steve Trevor, an American soldier who’s been spying on the Germans on behalf of the British in World War I. It’s “the war to end all wars,” Trevor tells Diana, and that’s all the invitation brave Diana needs to leave Themyscira and take on Ares—and thus, to defeat war itself.

Late into the movie, a character tries to convince Diana that humanity is not worth her heroism—they are savages, prone to tear one another apart, with or without Ares. They are getting what’s coming to them, the character says; leave them to their self-imposed suffering and don’t be sullied by their sins. Diana’s own mother says as much to her: “They don’t deserve you.”

Is that true? Do we deserve to be left alone in our suffering, forced to find our way without any higher sense of guidance or hope?

In my more cynical moments, and steeped in the news of the day, I can’t disagree. I look at each new atrocity we commit against one another—the erosion of kindness, our contempt for the natural creation, the -isms that stubbornly cling to us despite the fact that we should really know better by now—and I think, “Jesus died for this?!” Surely there’s some other two-bit planet in the universe that needs redeeming, and yet is slightly more worthy of the gift than we numbskull earthlings.

* * *

In today’s scripture, we’re told that there will be a grand sorting in the kingdom of God. Some, like sheep, will be gathered to Jesus’ right hand, having succeeded to feed the hungry and visit the stranger. Others, the goats, will be on his left hand, punished for having failed to feed, clothe and visit.

So… the question inevitably hangs in the air at this point…
Which are we? Sheep or goats?

Well, let’s find out. Should be simple enough. I’d like you to raise your hand if you’ve ever given food to a hungry person, or offered clothing to someone who had little, or if you’ve visited a stranger or someone who was sick, or given water to a thirsty person.

Impressive show of hands.

Now I’d like to ask you to raise your hand if you’ve ever failed to give food to a hungry person, or failed to offer clothing to someone who had little, or failed to visit the stranger or the sick, or not given water to a thirsty person.

So many hands! Well, this complicates things. And if I’m honest, I’ve been in the second category way more often than the first.

We don’t "deserve" saving… and yet the gift is given nonetheless.

Diana feels a sense of responsibility to protect humanity—it’s her reason for being, the pivotal moment she’s been training for her whole life. "Who would I be if I stay [on Themyscira]?" she asks her mother. For Diana, whether the world “deserves” her is irrelevant. She loves the world, and has the power to intervene on its behalf, and so she will. (Sound like someone we know?)

At a pivotal moment in the movie, Diana takes a stand against this business of deserving. She says, “It’s not about what you deserve. It’s about what you believe. And I believe in love.”

* * *

Gerard Hughes writes a little piece about God, comparing him to a character Hughes calls Good Old Uncle George. I wonder if he is a familiar character to some of you:

Good Old Uncle George is the relative that our parents takes us to visit, who they describe as very loving and very powerful. And when we come to visit, he tells us how happy he is to see us, and then says, “Now I want you to visit me every week, and let me show you what will happen if you don’t.” And he takes us down to his basement, where we hear the most awful screams and feel the heat of his fiery furnace, and we see the torment on the people’s faces. And then we head home clutching our mother and father’s hand, and they say, “Oh, don’t you just love Uncle George with all your heart and soul, mind and strength?” And the truth is that we detest the man, but we know we can’t say that. And from a young age a strange “religious schizophrenia” sets in. We know we are supposed to love him, but in reality, we are terrified and repulsed by this man. (paraphrased from Good Goats: Healing Our Image of God by Dennis, Matthew and Sheila Linn)

If you have a view of God that looks like Good Old Uncle George, you’re going to read this text as a warning of what will happen if you stray just a little bit from the right path.

But if your view of God is different—if you believe that it’s not about what you deserve, but what you believe, and if you believe in the power of love—you’re going to read this text differently.

Maybe Jesus preaches a strong word about sheep and goats, NOT because he’s Good Old Uncle George trying to smite us the minute we slip up.

Maybe he preaches sheep and goats because he cares so much about this world that he really, really wants us to know: You are always called to be sheep. You are always called upon to feed and clothe and comfort and visit. That is never not your job. That task is going to be yours for as long as you draw breath.

* * *

Several years ago, I was preparing to preach for Easter, and I had two stories I wanted to tell, and couldn’t decide which one to go with. Both helped flesh out the Easter message, that new life we yearn for, the new life that’s promised in the resurrection. One story was modest and small in scope. It was an ordinary tale of kindness, neighbor to neighbor. The other story was grand and sweeping, a dramatic tale of daring sacrifice and transformation. I became curious—what do people want to hear? The relatable tale, that feels like something we can relate to, or the dramatic story that can inspire us to risk greatly? I took an informal poll, and found that—of all the luck!—people were equally divided on what kind of stories resonate with us.

I saw a similar tension play out in the story of Wonder Woman. When Diana first meets Steve Trevor, he explains why he is fighting in the war: “My father told me once, he said, ‘If you see something wrong happening in the world, you can either do nothing, or you can do something.’ And I already tried nothing.”

And so for a lot of the movie. Diana is kind of tagging along, as the various characters put these little plans in place to try to do their own small part, to do something to try to help end the conflict. They come to a place along No Man’s Land in an entire town is suffering and held captive. Diana desperately wants to help this little town, but the other characters, armed with their “something,” tell her no. We need to keep going. Let’s just do our small part. Let’s stay focused on our own contribution. We can’t save everyone.

And Diana says No: I’m tired of doing Something. I’m tired of playing small. It’s time to do everything. All of the things! It’s time to give everything I have to the people who need me right here, right now.

And she steps out of that trench and steps into her own power. She becomes who she was created to be—she becomes Wonder Woman.

And later in the movie, the man who was content just to do something, ends up making a profound sacrifice. Because she gave everything she had, he was inspired to give everything he had.

And so, are we called to the small faithful gesture, or the bold sacrifice of faith? It has to be both. We live in the space, the “no man’s land,” between Something, and Everything… knowing we can only do what we can do, but knowing there will be times when we’re called to sacrifice everything we can possibly give.

Jesus sets a high bar in this text. Everyone we feed, or fail to feed, or clothe, or fail to clothe, or visit, or ignore, is Christ himself. And that is the challenge of our faith. But the one who judges us was also himself judged, found guilty, and suffered the depths of human pain. He was arrested in prison—sick from being beaten—and nobody came to visit him. He was thirsty on that cross and they didn’t give him water, they gave him sour wine. He was naked, and they did not clothe him, in fact they divided up his clothes to keep for themselves. He was a stranger to them.

But his story transcends all of that. His resurrection doesn’t just change some of the things. It changes everything. We need not fear death and darkness and deserved judgment, because they are not the whole story.

The whole story is love and life and transformation and hope.

It’s a story we know well, and one we can never fully know, but we glimpse just enough of it to feed and clothe and quench and visit and heal another day.

The story lives in the words of preacher William Sloane Coffin, who used to bless his congregations at the end of worship with these words:

May God give you grace never to sell yourself short.
Grace to risk something big for something good.
And grace to remember that the world is too dangerous for anything but truth,
And too small for anything but love.

People ask me all the time, "What should I do?" What can they do? And there's no simple answer to that. But one answer that's true for everybody is to start where you are. Harriet Tubman didn't call me and tell me what to do to make me an organizer! I had to start where I was, and that's the story of any organizer. You probably have an idea. You probably are thinking about an issue, but you're waiting for somebody to give you permission, you're waiting for somebody to tell you that that's the one issue at matters the most, and the reality is that there's so much to deal with. So you should do the thing right now that you think is the most important, that you actually already have some of the core skills [to address].

Organizing is about mobilizing your formal or informal networks for change. Or for an action. So when you know that family member who calls all the aunts and uncles, or maybe that family member is you, to get everybody to go and do one thing, that is mobilizing an informal network for an action. And then organizing is just taking that and scaling it up for good. So, start where you are.

That's the heart of improvisation, by the way. We think that improv is about the wacky unexpected action from out of left field. And sometimes it is. But more often, it's a series of small moves that build collaboratively and organically over time.

What do YOU think is most important? And what do YOU have some of the skills to address?

Start where you are, to make the world more equitable, just, and kind.
Make an offer.
Do what's obvious.
Do what's interesting.
Do what's next.

1. Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years 1954-1965: I just picked up this six-part documentary about the civil rights movement and can't wait to watch it again. My 11th-grade AP government teacher arranged a viewing of this series after school, and he felt it was so important that anyone who watched the whole thing would get two points on their entire semester grade. I showed up for the grade. I stayed because it was riveting and heartbreaking and convicting.

“This is not what we fought for, having been in Iraq and working with these interpreters,” Buchalter said in a phone interview Sunday. When he saw an Iraqi family emerge from detention, he presented them with something he hoped would convey America’s goodwill — a Purple Heart.

The best of who we are.

~

6. "First They Came": The Poem of the Protests. A lovely article about the Rev. Martin Niemoller and his poem that launched a thousand protest signs. There are many versions of the poem, which speaks to its power, but this one is displayed in the Holocaust Museum here in DC:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Socialist.Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Trade Unionist.Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Jew.Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

[The words] quickly became popular, from there, as a lyrical argument for civil rights and collective action—and, more broadly, for simple empathy. The quote was that rarest of things: a political argument grounded in religious tradition.

In 1933, Niemöller [said], he and his fellow clergy members included in the founding documents of the Pfarrernotbund the idea that any action made against a minister of Jewish heritage would be considered an action against the collective. As he put it: “That was probably the first anti-antisemitic pronouncement coming from the Protestant Church.”